This is probably a one shot...if I receive some requests to further it, I might. But I found this quote, and it needed sorting.
"Live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning."
― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories
The only sound was her beating heart. The only movement her rising and falling chest as the dawn made its song a tender event in the sky of raw and thorny pilgrimage.
Of course, she knew the place of her wandering, she was familiar with the potency of regret. Yet in the soft space of morning, her tendrils of placation subdued even the most dire of dreams.
She understood, as age laid waste to her body. She conceded her regret and boasted triumph. She merely desired a place of peace, and though she had many miles ahead of her, she wasn't without hope.
Jane got up.
Her feet hit the floor.
She began a motion of acceptance and moved to her kitchen (a paltry excuse for one, really), and brewed her coffee.
Often her thoughts would drift from the specks of light which dotted the desert sky. More often than not, the sun would impede her musings and make her tongue taste the sand whipped from the earth in mocking salute. Yes, she fretted over her publications. But in the quiet, she fretted more over the inexplicable tendency toward morbid fantasy, swimming its shape in hateful disgust.
He had visited her once.
It had been, she feared, a mistake.
But he was able, and he had helped her in her pursuit of the heavens.
He gave her answers.
Why did she wish to know.
She had shrugged her response glibly.
Her insatiable need for answers had brought it on, and she told herself that she only sought that. She told herself...and lied.
What it was she couldn't say. He was chaos in godlike shape.
But he had stayed for a night, taking his sleep on her sofa.
He told her he needed to flee his family, and wanted to ensure that, should he require it, he had a safe haven on Midgard.
And he left, telling her that perhaps, one day, he would return.
Jane was the shape to the chaos.
She existed too far to one side.
She existed. She existed...but she barely lived.
Her disdain for others grew...it fed on her impatience...and like a fool, she bent hungrily. Nothing, never more, a black bird once cried, and in the bleak bright of the landscape her eyes would strain in hopeful watch.
Absurd in her useless quest, her fret taunted her in gleeful mirth.
She could leave, she thought. She could go and take a job at a university somewhere.
A minute to a god could be a pitiful half life to a human.
Insofar as she held her watch, Jane never panicked.
She should go...useless in her enterprise and fearful in her passivity.
The day droned on.
Algorithms danced in trepidation.
So Poe- like and plaintive, Jane made herself go to bed.
It was seven at night.
In her dreams, she had the answers.
In her dreams, she flew.
And though the chaos she longed for never presented, it was felt, along the periphery of speculation.
It banged.
She woke.
Again, it filled the room...loud and demanding.
She looked at the time. 2am.
Jane got up.
Went to her kitchen and grabbed a knife.
She crept to the door, holding the weapon with white knuckles and shaking hand.
She swallowed her fear. It tasted like aluminum.
The door was thrown open so that any attacker wielding a gun would have a clear shot of her torso.
But she saw a tallish figure, imposing himself in her doorway.
The knife fell.
Her mouth went dry.
"Are you ready?" Loki asked.
And she nodded.